When we think of branding, we think of a logo – Coca-Cola, Disney, Apple, Nike, Starbucks, these are all logos that are instantly recognisable* – and though your logo is not your brand, it’s definitely an important part.

*I just went back to an old post from the summer, and I listed the same five brands!!

As an entrepreneur or small business, you probably don’t have a huge amount of money to invest in a top creative agency to design your logo and brand identity. Whether you have a big budget or not, however, whether you’re briefing a proper designer or someone on Fiverr or even trying to do it yourself, it’s important that you get this right. Your logo is one of the first things that your potential clients and customers will see – on your business card, on your website – and it’s crucial that it represents you in a professional and meaningful way.

With that in mind, I asked graphic designer Merelina Davies to put together 5 things that you should consider when you’re designing a logo for your business!

5 things to think about when designing a logo

Colour

The innocent drinks logo is simple but still meaningful and distinctive.

When designing a logo, colour is extremely important. It can convey a tone for your company and a theme for all other artwork including your website.

First of all, rule out colours that could clash with the theme you are creating. For example, red is a very bold colour and is used for speed and energy but it can also be associated with danger. Think about warm colours verses cold colours, and pastels verses bold bright colours.

You may also need to make the logo into a solid one-colour logo for printing in a black-and-white newspaper or putting over the top of a multi-coloured image or stitched onto uniforms. Try to keep the colours to a minimum amount as this helps with the reproduction onto other media as well as cost – for example, a gradient logo is impossible to stitch onto a uniform.

Once you have picked a colour, you can always use tints of the main colour to produce artwork layouts. Colour references are very important to make sure you get the correct colour from every printer and manufacturer: use the same CMYK values or even better you can use a Pantone colour to ensure consistency (but it’s more expensive to print with Pantones).

Simplicity

Don’t make the logo too complicated! Simple designs are the most effective and are cleaner to reproduce on artwork and fabrics. The logo needs to be recognisable from a distance, so a simple shape and bold text would be most effective – though it’s sometimes not possible if you are creating a delicate logo.

The Cadbury’s script logo was originally quite fussy when it was first used in the early 20th century and has been simplified over the years. In 2012, they also won the exclusive use of the Pantone 2685C, as used in their Dairy Milk packaging (source).

Choosing a typeface is extremely important as it can convey a tone for your company. The font you choose for the logo will then affect all your other artwork, such as letterheads and sub-logos if you branch out into different avenues. It can be unreadable, especially if a script typeface is used – for example, the “r” is sometimes displayed backwards on a script font so look out for these things when choosing a font.

I always like to pick a font that has different weights available, so when you’re creating other artwork you can use bold, medium and thin styles while still keeping the same font.

Where it’s going

You may only be designing a logo for a small business now but your company can grow and grow. Your logo can be put on a wide range of digital media, different websites and social media. Think about how it is used on these sites – normally at the top of a page on your own website, functioning as a ‘home’ button. It will become your profile picture on social media sites. You may also need to use it as a ghosted logo to copyright your own images.

You should also consider the print medium and this can be very diverse. Adverts in a newspaper sometimes have limited colour to print your logo and can also be very small, so it has to be readable in an extremely small size.

If your business grows further, you could end up doing billboards, which would mean your logo being used on a really big scale.

You might choose to put your logo on USB sticks (engraved), umbrellas (screen printed), uniforms (stitched), the side of a car (decals) – all these media would require a vector logo with limited colour options.

Formats

There are two key formats. First, a vector file, which is made up of paths and can be scaled both very small and extremely big; this is usually made in Illustrator and will have an .ai or .eps file extension. The second option is a bitmap file, which is made up of pixels and doesn’t scale very well. The best way is to create your logo as a vector file and then you can make other formats from here.

You will need a full-colour vector file for print adverts; a black-and-white vector file for engravings or newspaper adverts. A vector file is also used for stickers on the side of a car as the decal company uses the paths to cut around the logo to make the sticker. You can save your vector file as a jpg for use on digital e.g. on websites and social media. You can also save your vector file as a png file so it has a clear background and you can overlay the logo, for example over a photograph.

Another format to consider is both a portrait and a landscape version of your logo. A landscape version works well on a website as it flows along the screen and is easy to read. A portrait version would be best to use, for example, on lanyard staff passes where you want to see it from a distance. If you have both options of a portrait and landscape version, then you can place your logo as clearly as possible on any medium.

Checking and double-checking

The airbnb logo – clean and simple, strong colour, looks good in big and small formats – was controversial when it was released in 2014 as not only did it resemble the logo of several existing companies but it was also compared to both male and female genitalia…

It may sound obvious but this point needs to be emphasised! Please check your logo according to the following points:

Make sure it doesn’t look like anyone else’s logo that is currently being used.

Put all your competitor logos on a page with your logo in the middle – does it look similar to the others? Does it stand out? Does it look professional? Get a friend to look at them and see which brand they prefer. If you can look more professional than your competitors you can get more business.

Does it look rude or have subliminal messages? This sounds ridiculous but there are logos out there that haven’t been checked! Does it look like any body part for example – turn it upside down and look at your logo from every angle!

Is it clear? Can people read it? Do the colours used clash? Check it as well with someone who’s colour blind.

Can it be seen from a distance? Is it recognisable on both a small and large scale?

When we think about brands, we probably think about logos. Coca-Cola, Disney, Nike, Starbucks, Apple… But a brand is so much more than a logo.

A brand is essentially a promise to the customer. It communicates what you stand for, what customers can expect from your products and services, and how you’re different to your competitors. Your brand is what makes you more than just a commodity, it’s what creates loyalty among your customers and, if you’re really good, sometimes even love.

Ultimately what you’re trying to do is create a distinctive and cohesive brand experience for your customers over a period of time and across different touch points. In theory, this means that if you hide your brand name then your consumer can still identify the branding elements as being associated with your particular brand.

To achieve this, you’ll need to choose those core equity elements that will really represent your brand in the eyes of your customers and will become associated with, or perhaps are already associated with, your brand. Playing around with these elements too much, making changes too often, will leave your customers confused, they won’t associate your advertising with your brand, they won’t find your product on shelf or online, and ultimately you will lose all the benefits associated with building a distinctive brand.

Here are 4 questions to ask yourself in order to build a brand for your business:

1. What’s your overall mission?

The best place to start to build your brand is with your why, your purpose. This is the reason you’re in business. It’s who you are, what you believe in, and why you exist.

A good example is Amazon: “Our vision is to be the Earth’s most customer-centric company.” If you’ve ever contacted their customer service, or seen some of the fun conversations that have gone viral (most recently, Thor speaking to Odin – Google it if you haven’t seen it), you’ll know that they are doing all they can to live up to this mission.

Another one is Nike: “To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world. *If you have a body, you are an athlete.”

Having a purpose is becoming ever more important as Millennials and younger generations favour an emotional connection with a brand, and a degree of social responsibility, as they make their purchase decisions. Your brand purpose will also determine the overall direction of your company, it will guide your decision making, and it will shape your strategy going forward.

2. What qualities do you want customers to associate with your brand?

What does your brand stand for? What are the key messages that you want to communicate about your brand?

Established brands are likely to have very clear attributes associated with them:

If I say Volvo, you’ll probably think safety.

If I say Apple, you’ll say something like design or innovation.

If I say Disney? Imagination, magic, family…

What are the words you want people to use to describe your brand? Note that these should be broader concepts, not products. If Apple stood for computers, they would never have been able to successfully expand into mp3 players and phones; nor would they have inspired such fierce brand loyalty.

In order to get these qualities firmly associated with your brand, they’ll need to be distinctive versus your competitors, relevant to your customers, and credible based on what your brand actually does. Once that’s established, everything you do will need to support and reinforce those qualities.

3. What benefits does your brand provide?

Your benefits are how the products or services you provide will actually help your customers.

The first type to consider are the functional benefits. This is not just a list of the functionalities of your products, however. As an example, Steve Jobs first sold the iPod as “an amazing little device that holds 1,000 songs… and it goes right in my pocket” – highlighting what the product could do for you in real-life terms, rather than simply giving you the technical specifications, “with a 5 GB hard drive”.

The second type are the emotional benefits. When I worked on marketing perfume, these were pretty much the only benefits we had to communicate about – beyond simply ‘smelling good’, a perfume is all about the story, an emotional insight that involves feeling sexy or confident, for example.

Looking at those benefits that you’ve identified, make sure you distinguish between those that are the same as your competitors’ benefits – ‘points of parity’ – and those that are different, or better – ‘points of difference’.

4. How will you bring your brand to life?

This is where the logo comes in and you probably have that already, as it’s something that most people do right away. Think beyond the logo, however: Do you have a tag line? What are your brand colours? Typography, fonts? Imagery? Music? Pricing?

In order to build a consistent brand identity, you’ll need to be consistent in terms of these executional elements. Think of the Nike swoosh; the red you associate with Coca-Cola (and which they recently made more prominent in the re-design of their different product lines); the distinctive shape of the Pringles can, instantly recognisable; Red Bull’s “gives you wings” tagline…

Now this doesn’t mean that you have to keep each and every aspect of the branding the same for all eternity; your brand can and should evolve over time (although be prepared to face your customers’ wrath if you make too drastic a change!). When you have a new business, however, and you want to build a brand, you’d do well to be very consistent as you try to construct an identity – an authentic one – in the minds of your customers over time.

We talk a lot about content in the online space, creating content, distributing content – but how do you make that content authentic and ‘ownable’ for your brand or company? Whether you’re writing 500-word blog posts on your website or 140-character tweets, it’s not just about the type of content that you publish, but the style of that content. Here, copywriter Alex Genn shares his thoughts on why defining your tone of voice is so important, and how you can go about doing so for your own business.

Tone of what?

We’ve all heard the term bandied around but what does it really mean? To me, tone of voice is the definition of how the brand speaks (in the written word). Brand language is how we put the tone of voice into practice. And it’s as much part of the brand as the logo, values, packaging or services. Usually it’s expressed through the written word, on the page, online, in social media, in videos (as voice over) or wherever. There’s also cross-over into design. The brand language can define where and when you capitalise words, how you punctuate, the format of dates and times, and anything else that’s written down.

What’s it for?

The tone of voice expresses your brand’s unique personality, reflecting the values, objectives and offering of the company. Crucially it does so in a consistent way. This re-assures the reader (customer) that the brand is trustworthy. So in the same way that you would have brand guidelines to ensure the logo always uses the same colour pallet, your tone of voice allows you to create a brand language guide that can ensure the brand expresses itself consistently.

How does it work?

Tone of voice is one of those things you’ll already be aware of but don’t really notice, at least not until it’s pointed out. For example, if you think about Innocent Drinks, their tone is light-hearted and earnest. It brings to mind a chatty, fun friend, who cares about your health. Now consider IBM; their tone is serious, traditional and austere. It feels like a consultant concerned about your business. The tone of each is very different but absolutely right for their business and for their customers. And both serve to re-enforce who they are as brands, as well as their understanding of their customers’ expectations of them as a brand.

What About Me?!

So here’s the tricky question for every business, large and small: how do you find your tone of voice? Well, the real question, and sorry to get philosophical, is actually: who are you? We need to define who the brand is first. Once we know that, we can understand their personality. And once we know the personality, we can define how that ‘person’ would speak.

It’s very common for companies to be so busy with the day-to-day business of servicing clients and selling their services that things like branding don’t ever move off the back burner. Especially when getting the brand defined seems so often to come with an enormous bill from a branding agency. And of course more than that, it can be contentious. After all, it’s easy for everyone at the company to agree about what you sell. But how do you find a consensus for who your brand is?

1. Who’s in?

The first thing you need to decide is, well, who’s deciding? Create a stakeholder group, making sure you include everyone senior or who would want to be involved, as if they only get involved later on they can de-rail the process, undoing all your hard work.

2. Brass tacks

Once you’ve got your stakeholder group, you need to start your company soul searching. You may have done this already; you might have already defined the company’s core values, its mission and its objectives. You might know exactly how these are perceived by, and relate to, your customer and staff. If so, great, if not, you need to get cracking.

3. Making it human

Once you’ve agreed on how these key aspects of your company are understood, and connect with your customers and staff, you can move on to thinking about your brand personality – this is how you discover who your business is, to define how it speaks. This might feel like an odd process, applying something distinctly human to an organisation, but it’s crucial to establishing something that people can relate to, after all, people relate to other people, so it makes sense to give your organisation relatable human qualities.

4. Giving it a voice

Having defined a personality that everyone agrees fits the company’s values and objectives, you can move on to express how that personality talks. Is it serious, austere and wise or fun, impulsive and quirky? Whatever you decide, the language will fall naturally out of the personality. You’ll need to consider carefully everything about the way you use words, phrases, punctuation and grammar. For example, a light-hearted conversational tone will use more relaxed grammar, shorter sentences and words, and colloquialisms. Conversely a more serious tone will use traditional grammar, longer sentences and words, and generally more formal terminology.

5. Setting it in stone

Once you’ve defined your voice, you need to make sure it relates to where it came from. So have a look at those values we talked about earlier. How does the voice you’ve chosen express them? Which phrases and ideas express each value best? Create some examples. Of course you need to make sure these also reflect the personality. These are the building blocks of your brand language document. Give everyone in your organisation (or at least in marketing/communications) access to this document and it can ensure consistency across all your brand communications.